Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Education. New
York: Pitman & Sons, 1922, 1331 - 1332. (Appears originally as an
appendix in Philistine & Genius.)

By precocity I mean the manifestation of the child's
mental functions at a period earlier than the one observed in the past and
present generations of children.

In the course of his growth and development the individual
unfolds his inner powers through acquisition of the stored-up experiences of
previous generations.

The well known biogenetic law may, with
some modifications, be applied to mental life. The development of the individual
is an abbreviated reproduction of the evolution of the species. Briefly put:
Ontogenesis is an epitome of Phylogenesis. This biogenetic law holds true in the
domain of education. The stored-up experiences of the race are condensed,
foreshortened, and recapitulated in the child's life history. This process of
progressive "precocity," or of foreshortening of education, has been
going on unconsciously in the course of human evolution. We have reached a stage
when man can be made conscious of this fundamental process, thus getting control
over his own growth and development.

Although the process of foreshortening of
education has been taking place throughout the history of mankind, and
especially of civilized humanity, still the process has remained imperceptible
on account of its extremely slow rate of progress. Hence the fact of
"precocity," or of early development of children, has been hitherto
regarded as rare, as phenomenal. Like all rare phenomena, precocity, or early
child development, is considered as unique, as abnormal, and even as
pathological. In fact, many still regard precocity as some form of malady akin
to mental alienation.

It is well to bear in mind that phenomena,
at first scarce and rare, may under favorable conditions become
sufficiently numerous to be quite common. In fact, we may lay it down as a law
that all discoveries, inventions, and changes in general, economical, political,
social, mental, moral, and religious, first appear on a small scale in limited
areas from which they spread in various directions. Organisms start, as
variations or mutations, from minute nuclei of growth; species have their origin
in small centres and restricted areas. A new species may begin with some
apparently insignificant variation which may grow and develop, and which, from a
certain standpoint, may be regarded as an abnormality.

What at present is considered as
"precocity," and hence as an abnormality, may really be the
foreshadowing of the future. The apparently precocious variation may and will
turn out a normal phenomenon. The stone which the builders refused is become the
head stone of the corner. Early education, precocity, is to become the corner
stone of human life. At present the preliminary period of child education is
unduly retarded to the detriment of the individual and society.

The truth is, we do not realize the
importance of early training. We begin education late in the child's life, when
dispositions have become formed and habits have become rigid. This delay
seriously injures the growth of the child by lowering the level of mental
activity. The critical points of formation of mental interests are allowed to
slip by, leaving the individual irresponsive to mental, æsthetic, and moral
interests. The critical turning points, when the best energies could be brought
out, are not taken care of at the right moment.

The mental functions become prematurely atrophied and
degenerated. When we later on attempt to awaken those functions, we are
surprised to find them absent. We labor under the false impression that the
child is naturally inapt and deficient. To make up for this apparent deficiency
we force the child's mind into narrow channels, crippling and deforming it into
mean mediocrity. The child is run into the rigid moulds of home, school, and
college with the result of permanent mutilation of originality and genius. The
individual is deformed, because the critical spirit of inquiry and originality
is racked on the Procrustes' bed of home and school. The unfortunate thing about
it is the firm belief that the crippled spirit of the child is a congenital
mediocrity. Instead of shouldering the fault, we put the burden on heredity.
Darwinism with its spontaneous variation and hereditary transmission,
Austro-Germanic Mendelism, accompanied by a widespread propaganda of Eugenics,
have blotted out from view the far more fundamental factors of environment and
education which play such a paramount role in man's life.

We may profit by recent studies in
Psychopathology. In my investigations I have shown the important role which
early child experience plays in the patient's life. Psychopathic affections can
be traced to child fears which become afterwards reinforced by unfavorable
conditions of life. This is formulated in my works on psychopathology.
Psychopathology clearly brings out the significant fact that a good start in
early childhood is of the utmost consequence to the individual. Only a good
education in early life can save man from the innumerable psychopathic
maladies to which he is subject. The seeds of vicious habits and of criminal
tendencies can be eliminated in early childhood.

Early development or what is termed "precocity" in
children will not only prevent vice, crime, and disease, but will strengthen the
individual along all lines, physical, mental, and moral. We should be careful
not to cast the child's mind into ready made moulds, not to subject his mind,
his character to the yoke of meaningless mannerisms and rigid formalities. We
should have respect for the child's personality. We should remember that there
is genius in every healthy, normal child.

We are blind to the child's latent genius,
because we look to brute force as our standard. Like savages, we are afraid of
genius, especially when it is manifested as "precocity in children."
This abject fear of genius and of precocity is one of the most pernicious
philistine superstitions, causing the retardation of the progress of humanity.
The fear of mental precocity is essentially the phobia of the inveterate
philistine.

We should bear in mind that the philistine
is an insignificant, though exact part of a huge social machine, of a
Frankenstein "kultur" before which the philistine prostrates himself
in dust, a social monster of which he is proud to form an irresponsible mite.
Whether he be an atom of a political organization, of a nation, or of a military
kultur-system, the philistine is trained to be content to play the same ignoble,
slavish role of submission, obedience, and irresponsibility. Without personal
conscience, without personal will, without personal initiative,
the impersonal philistine is like the stupid genie of Aladdin's lamp who
slavishly obeys the master of the magic lamp.

The present horrible European war
(predicted in this volume several years before the onset of the war. See pp. 30,
31) is the unfortunate, but natural outcome of philistine education and
philistine life. The immediate cause of the war may be traced to politics,
greed, competition, to commercial, industrial, cultural, national,
international, and racial complications. At bottom, however, the present
European war is ultimately due to our pernicious system of training, the bane of
our industrial, social life. Millions of men are drilled and disciplined to act
as automata; men are trained from childhood, at home, school, college, and
university to surrender their individual judgment, and follow blindly an alleged
"social consciousness," entrusted, by a set of philistine bureaucrats,
to superior leaders, to generals, admirals, and field-marshals. Men are
hypnotized by a pernicious and vicious system of training and quasi-education to
consider it a high, sacred ideal to obey implicitly the will of a few officials
and diplomats, to attack, plunder and slaughter at the command of generals and
officers, in the interest of a plutocratic oligarchy, hallowed by the vague
shibboleth: "Flag, Country, Patriotism."* The youth of nations is
debauched with the belief in the supreme grandeur of delivering their personal
responsibility in the keeping of a handful of Byzantine bureaucrats,
irresponsible junkers, and half-crazed Cæsars.

The principle "Be Childlike" is paramount in the
education of mankind. The child represents the future, all the possibilities,
all the coming greatness of the human race. We, the adults, are contaminated by
the brutal passions and vices incident to the struggle for existence and
self-preservation.

Plasticity of mind is characteristic of
genius. Plasticity of mind and body is preeminently characteristic of the child.
Adaptability and plasticity are found in all young tissue, muscle, gland, and
nerve. As the organism ages, becomes differentiated, and adapted to special
functions and conditions of life, it loses its original plasticity. The tissues
become fixed and the functions set. The adult's brain and mind begin to work in
ruts. The child is superior to the adult.

The child looks at the world with eyes
simple, clear, bright, not blinded by the heavy scales of traditions,
superstitions, and prejudices of remote ages. The intricate worries, complex
fears, selfish motives, brutal passions, greed, revenge, malice, vice, enmity do
not as yet mar the soul of the child. Artificial needs, strong animal passions
have no firm hold on the child's mind. The child's mind is purer, fresher,
brighter, far more original than the adult intelligence with its philistine
notions and hide-bound habits of thought and belief.

With age the mind becomes specialized and degraded in
quality. Unless checked by a good education and by a persistent course of mental
activity, intellectual and other mental interests, the adult mind is apt to
deteriorate. Unless controlled by a good education and by intense mental
interests, free from service to animal needs, the emotions of self-regard, the
impulse of self-preservation with its fear instinct gradually gain in man the
upper hand. In the child, on the contrary, the personal interests are relatively
weak, and fluctuating, hence the possibility of pure disinterestedness, pure
curiosity, love of learning, the root of all originality present both in genius
and the child. The child presents the innocence and gentleness of human genius,
the adult philistine is the embodiment of the force and cunning of the brute.

We should not be scared by the bug-bear of precocity. We
should awaken man's genius by giving the child an early, a
"precocious" education. We should bear in mind that the knowledge of
our schoolboys and schoolgirls far surpasses that of the ancient sages or of the
mediæval doctors. We should learn to understand and to utilize the process of
progressive foreshortening of race acquisitions in the history of the
individual.

The great biologist, Professor C. S. Minot, comes to a
similar conclusion, as the result of his profound biological investigations:
"I believe," says Minot, "that this principle of psychological
development, paralleling the career of physical development, needs to be more
considered in arranging our educational plans. For if it be true that the
decline in the power of learning is most rapid at first, it is evident that
we want to make as much use of the early years as possible—that
the tendency, for instance, which has existed in many of our
universities, to postpone the period of entrance into college, is biologically
an erroneous tendency. It would be better to have the young man get to college
earlier, graduate earlier, get into practical life or into professional schools
earlier, while the power of learning is greater."

I may say that within my experience children who had the
advantage of an early education and training manifested a higher grade of
intellectual and moral life, a far better state of physical health than children
brought up under the present retarding and crippling system of education. In
conclusion I may add that in order to gain access to man's Reserve Energy
we must have recourse to early child education, to the much maligned, and
greatly feared "Precocity in Children."

* "The cheapest' form of pride," says Schopenhauer,
"is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation it follows that
he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise, he would not
have recourse to those which he shares with his fellow-men. . . . Every
miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts as a last
resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend
all its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his
inferiority. . . .National character is only another name for the particular
form which the littleness, perversity, and baseness of mankind take in every
country.". . . "Narrowness, prejudice, vanity, and self-interest are
the main elements of patriotism." . . . "Does not all history show
that whenever a king is firmly established on the throne, and the people reach
some degree of prosperity, he uses it to lead an army, like a band of robbers,
against adjoining countries? Are not almost all wars ultimately undertaken for
purpose of plunder?" . . . Schopenhauer prophetically warns his countrymen:
"All war is a matter of robbery, and the Germans should take that as a
warning."